Value of Hippias' work.
Even Eratosthenes counts downward.
Clinton's warning.
This truth, which applies to modern scholars so
signally, applies no less to the ancient critics of the Greek legends. When we find that Thucydides accepts a piece of ancient history like this account of the Greek settlement of Sicily, we must first of all be sure that he is not the victim of a fit of acquiescence in an older chronicler. When we hear that Aristotle and Polybius, two great and sceptical men, accepted the Olympiads, we must first know exactly what they said about the earlier dates[68:1], and then we must be assured that they did not simply acquiesce in the work of Hippias. For this Hippias was clearly a man writing with a deliberate policy. He must produce a complete catalogue; he must make his documents conform to it. And so there is evidence in Pausanias that he not only succeeded in his purpose, but that he modified or re-wrote certain inscriptions which we may suppose did not suit his purpose. I refuse to put faith in such an authority, and I refuse to accept as the
first real date in Greek history an epoch fixed by all the Greek chronologers in a downward calculation from the Trojan war,—as may be seen even in the scientific and accurate Eratosthenes. His fragments, written at a time when there really existed Greek science, in a day rich with all the learning of previous centuries, still manifest the old faith in the Trojan war, the Return of the Heracleids, the colonization of Ionia, and the guardianship of Lycurgus, as events to be fixed both absolutely and in relation to one another, and to serve as a basis for all the succeeding centuries down to the day of real and contemporary records. 'In these early dates and eras,' says Fynes Clinton in a remarkable passage[69:1], 'by a singular error in reasoning, the authority of Eratosthenes is made to be binding upon his predecessors; while those who come after him are taken for original and independent witnesses in matters which they really derived from his chronology. The numbers given by Isocrates for the Return of the Heracleidæ[69:2] are repeated three times, and are more trustworthy; and yet the critics try to correct them by the authority of Eratosthenes.'
§ 32. What, then, is the outcome of all this discussion?
Summary of the discussion.
The first three stages of Greek history are, so to speak, isolated, and separated by two blank periods, one of which has to this day remained a great gulf,
over which no bridge has yet been constructed. Over the second, which immediately precedes proper history, the Greeks made a very elaborate bridge, which they adorned with sundry figures recovered from vague tradition and arranged according to their fancy. But it is only after this reconstructed epoch of transition that we can be sure of our facts.
